Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/8818132.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      The_Walking_Dead_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Carl_Grimes/Negan
  Character:
      Negan_(Walking_Dead), Carl_Grimes
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Canon_Divergence, Lingerie, handjobs
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-12-11 Words: 4045
****** Can't Pretend ******
by itallstartedwithdefenestration
Summary
     Carl had an opportunity to kill Negan. He's still trying to figure
     out why he didn't take it.
Notes
     Takes place in an au where Carl stayed with Negan at the Sanctuary
     after 7x07 instead of going back to Alexandria.
     Title from "Can't Pretend" by Tom Odell.
     Carl is 17.
Sometimes, still, Carl will look at Negan and wonder why he didn’t kill him
when he had the chance, when they were at Alexandria for the first time in two
months and Rick, everyone, had ambushed the trucks, held their guns to Negan’s
head and told Carl to bash his brains in with Lucille. It isn’t as if he’s
never killed before—hell, he killed his own mom, and for all his shit-talking
Negan’s right, you don’t come back from that. Three years on Carl still wakes
up sometimes sweating feeling like her hand is on his wrist, like she’s staring
at him from a pool of blood, her stomach slashed open in ribbons. His mom
hadn’t exactly been there for him but he still misses her in a gaping aching
sort of way, like a gunshot wound, when he allows himself to think of her at
all.
But he hadn’t killed Negan. He hadn’t even tried. Lucille in his hand and
everyone, his dad, Michonne, Daryl—even some of the Saviors, though Carl’s sure
they’ve been taken care of since—screaming at him to do it and he’d looked down
at Negan, at that face he knew he was supposed to loathe with his entire being,
and it was like he couldn’t even breathe. The sun shining on the back of his
neck and the rest of Alexandria surrounding them, closing in, first time he’d
seen the place in eight full weeks and it hadn’t even felt like home anymore.
He killed Glenn, the logical half of Carl’s brain yells at him. And Abraham
might’ve been a dick but he didn’t deserve going down like that.
He killed Glenn and Maggie would kill you if she knew.
But Maggie’s not here. Maggie’s at Hilltop. Carl’s at the Sanctuary. And
Negan’s alive, and try as he might, Carl can’t bring himself to regret that.
Not yet.
Well, at least not most of the time.
“Carl!” Negan calls from halfway across the room. “Get that sweet little ass
over here.”
Carl presses his hand on the floor for support, squatting as he is next to
Joshua to “make sure he’s not fucking up, again,” as Negan had put it earlier.
Before heading out to do god knows what, and part of Carl had hoped he’d be
gone until late, so he could have, like—at least twelve hours to process his
emotions, but no, apparently Negan just. Doesn’t care about breathing room,
because he’s back. When Carl looks over he’s leaning against that same railing
he’d first inducted Carl at all those months ago, looking as always like the
cat who got the damn cream.
“What do you want, I’m busy,” Carl says, with his hair falling over his
shoulder in a—god, he hates using the word ponytail, but there’s no other way
to describe it. He can see Negan’s eyes lighting on his bad one in a way that
makes something brief and instinctive flare up in Carl’s stomach. A bright hot
flash of whatever the fuck kind of bad thing prevented him from taking Lucille
down on his stupid head a week ago.
Negan’s gloved hand flexes on the railing. “Just come here, don’t make me go
down there and get you,” he says, and then he disappears behind the plastic
sheeting that separates the main area of the compound from his quarters.
“Got you on your toes, don’t he,” Joshua says, without looking up.
Carl reaches out, taps him on the chin. “Hey,” he says, and then, when Joshua
glances at him, reluctance and annoyance steaming on his face: “Just finish
your fucking job.” He nods once at the furnace, straightens up. Mouth twitching
involuntarily when Joshua’s spine shudders as he looks away.
“Watch him,” Carl tells Dwight, and then he heads upstairs.
Negan is in his room, as Carl had known he would be. Lounging on his chair with
one arm draped over the back, an ankle crossed over the opposite knee. Head
tilted a little against his free hand, faint amused expression on the face as
he watches Carl walk in.
“What do you want?” Carl asks, crossing his arms over his chest. Goosebumps
that have nothing to do with the temperature coating his skin and he’d hope
that Negan couldn’t see but then Negan seems to know everything.
Negan nods his chin up. “Close the door,” he says, and, “Got somethin’ for you
while I was out.”
Carl shuts the door, tugs on his hair. “What,” sarcastically, “like a present?”
Negan’s still just sitting there. Watching him without entirely turning his
head. It feels like being scrutinized in a glass cage and Carl doesn’t think it
should make his palms sweat so much.
“It’s on the bed,” Negan says, and raises his eyebrows towards a bundle on the
mattress. Carl walks forward, even with his back to Negan he can still feel
those eyes on him, on his spine, on his ass. When he reaches down to take up
the rags his arms shift and he hears a slight sound behind him but upon turning
there’s no indication on Negan’s face that anything’s happened.
“It’s dirty cloth,” Carl says, holding it in his arms as he used to hold Judith
when she was still newborn. “Thanks, I definitely wanted more of this—”
“Unfold it, smartass,” Negan says, with his mouth just twitching at the corner.
Carl does. And then immediately wishes he hadn’t. There’s a lump of something
lacy and pink in his hands and he’s never actually seen it before in person but
he caught his dad jerking off to porn once years ago and one time, here,
accidentally, he saw one of the wives draped over the back of that luxuriant
couch they have in their room, in a see-through robe and not much else. Hers
were black, and skimpier than these, but there’s no mistaking what they are,
all the same.
“Lingerie,” he says, and embarrassingly his voice fucking cracks like it hasn’t
since he was fourteen. “You got me—you got hot pink lingerie. For me.”
Negan’s smirking now, devil’s wise-ass grin, and Carl has one of those moments
where he wonders very, very hard why he didn’t go through with it back at
Alexandria. “Bingo,” he says, and makes inappropriate finger guns.
Carl drops the rags Negan was keeping them in and just studies the underwear
itself. It’s mostly lace and silk, a pair of panties and a bra. Thin and a
little faded with age and disuse, the tags on the back rubbed almost totally
clean. Smaller than anything Carl’s ever owned.
He says, “Why,” even though he knows it’s a stupid question. The way Negan
looks at him makes that flare shoot up bright and telling in his chest again,
like a fire he can’t seem to put out. He’s never had anyone look at him like
that before. It’s more intense than he knows what to do with, especially when
Negan wants something from him. Like he does now, apparently.
Negan nods at the clothes. “Put ‘em on, kid,” he says.
Carl knew that was coming, of course, but he still brings his eyebrows together
because he should’ve killed Negan a week ago, he shouldn’t be helping him with
directing the Saviors, he shouldn’t be attracted to him, he shouldn’t have gone
back to Alexandria after two months of living at the Sanctuary and seen his dad
and Michonne and thought, for the tiniest of moments, that he absolutely
fucking despised them—
“And what if I don’t want to,” Carl says, because he knows he can get away with
it.
Negan unfolds himself from the chair in a lithe and dangerous way that makes a
bolt of real heat, not just that flare of warmth, coil down Carl’s spine. His
dick jerks in his jeans and he stares down at the panties, thinks of how it
would feel, maybe, getting hard with that material rubbing against his
sensitive skin. The scratchy texture of the lace juxtaposed with the smooth
silk on hot flesh—
“Did it sound like I was asking?” Negan says, when he’s walked forward enough
that he’s standing nearly over Carl. Leaning in and talking with his body as he
does, and Carl looks up at him and wants, very badly, to scratch his hand on
the stubble grazing Negan’s jaw.
Instead he huffs out, annoyed more at the amusement creeping in along the edges
of Negan’s eyes than at the actual words, and slips into the adjacent bathroom
to change. The panties are a little tight and the bra is loose on his chest,
puffing out around nothing. He can’t figure out how the clasps work in the back
so he ends up with the straps on his shoulders, everything dangling in a way he
knows it shouldn’t be. Standing in Negan’s bathroom in lingerie with his
clothes in a heap on the floor. In the mirror his cheeks are so flushed they
look ugly next to the pink of the underwear.
He smooths his hands down his stomach, over the edge of the panties. They hug
the v of his hipbones and bulge out around his dick, not quite fitting, the
tight fabric cutting into his flesh. Tugs on the edges that curve along his
thighs. It’s pretty material, pretty clothes. He closes his eyes, tries to
picture a woman in them. Some woman. But all the women he knows are too much
family, or anyway they used to be, and in the end all he can see is himself,
standing here, gangly and awkward and not enough.
Negan raps on the door. “Hey,” he calls. “You coming out or what?”
“I, uh—yeah.” Carl clears his throat. Tries one more time at the clasps before
giving up. “Yeah, hang on.” He takes a deep breath, steeling himself, and then
opens the door.
Negan’s sitting on his bed, but he stands when Carl appears, breathes out.
“Shit, kid,” he says, staring. His eyes catch on the loose clasp in the back.
“C’mere,” he says. His voice hitting a register that Carl’s only heard once
before with him. There goes that shiver again. In the lingerie it’s impossible
to hide his dick’s interest in the conversation but Negan either doesn’t notice
or doesn’t feel like commenting—both seem unlikely—because he just crooks his
finger and waits for Carl to come closer before turning him around at the
shoulder and fixing the clasp for him. The bra is tight too, almost more so
than the panties. But it fits snug against his chest now, and a second later
Negan’s bare finger is running the length of his spine. Catching on the straps.
The other hand resting for a moment on Carl’s hip, close to the same edges Carl
himself was fingering just a moment ago.
“I want you wearing this the rest of the day,” Negan tells him, still in that
tone. Carl isn’t sure he knows he’s breathing.
“What, like—in here, with you?”
“No.” Negan’s fingers leave his back and travel up to his hair, adjusting the
tail so that it’s less messy from the day. Stroking along his scalp so that
Carl has to close his eyes. “Out. You still have to take care of my shit, make
sure fuckin’ Joshua’s not fucking everything up.” His hand trips over Carl’s
ribs; it’s almost too much.
“Shirt on?” Carl asks.
Negan’s mouth isn’t quite on his skin, but Carl feels that fucking smirk
anyway. “Shirt off,” he says, and Carl exhales.
“I don’t want to.”
Negan’s fingers leave his hip, and suddenly Carl’s being turned back around.
Negan still looks amused, his head tilted. Carl wonders how far he could push
before this stopped being a game, if it is still a game at all. He wonders,
frankly, if he’d still want to push, the way he used to two months ago. Before
he realized how it works here. Before he realized who Negan is underneath
everything.
“You seem to be confusing orders with requests a lot today,” Negan says, and
when he trails his fingers down Carl’s arm it’s so light and deliberate Carl’s
executive thinking shuts clear off.
“…Fine,” he says, and absolutely does not let himself smile when Negan’s face
lights up like he’s given him a damn Christmas present. “Can I at least put my
jeans on?”
Negan snorts. “Hell, kid, I would never objectify you like that.”
Carl feels his mouth drop and that burst of heat explode in his chest. He
doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or not and decides on a scoff as he heads
back into the bathroom to take his pants off the floor. “So parading me around
for two months shirtless hasn’t been objectification.”
Negan shrugs. “No air-conditioning in a building with massive glass windows,
gets pretty hot in here,” he says. “I’m just trying to make sure you’re
comfortable.”
“Says the guy who wears leather zipped up year-round,” Carl points out, tugging
his pants over his hips. He’s not smiling. He isn’t. He kind of hates Negan for
making this so difficult—or rather, maybe, he hates him for making it so damn
easy. It’s like drowning, it’s pulled him under with no trouble. Except
he—fuck, he doesn’t really want to resurface.
Negan reaches out, slips a hand under the waistline of Carl’s jeans. His heart
stops until he feels the rough fingers close around the underwear, tug up so
that the edge is just visible. It rides on his dick in much the same way Carl
had imagined it would when he’d first been holding the panties at Negan’s
bedside.
“You sure you don’t want me to stay in here?” Carl asks, staring at Negan’s
hand on his hip.
“Go do your damn job, kid,” Negan says, with no heat whatsoever behind the
words. He slaps Carl’s ass on the way out of the room and Carl walks flushed
and flustered back into the front of the compound. It’s a little awkward
walking with the panties constricting him but he doesn’t let himself think
about it, or about the way everyone sort of stares at him for a few seconds as
he descends the stairs. Let them stare, he thinks, moving back to Dwight and
Joshua. They none of them would dare to do jack shit.
Dwight raises his eyebrows at the bra and the barely-visible line of panties
but doesn’t say anything, just backs away. Joshua opens his mouth and Carl
squats—Jesus that’s a new sensation—and touches his chin again.
“What’d we talk about before I left?” he asks, and just stares at Joshua until
he looks away. The anxiety in his chest bleeds away into something a little too
close to satisfaction. No wonder Negan does this, it gives a fucking thrill
like nothing else.
The rest of the day passes like all the others have. Carl walks the Sanctuary
watching everything, half-conscious of the way he must look, coltish and tanned
and so young, hair up, bra covering but not hiding his nipples. He feels almost
feminine, pretty. When Arat sees him she grins, gives him a thumbs up.
“Wear it like a Victoria’s Secret model,” she says, and Carl snorts, trying
unsuccessfully to hide it. He really should’ve killed Negan, probably. He never
intended to like anyone here, but they work the same way as his dad’s group.
The ones closest to Negan are—really not that bad, and Carl can’t stand that
he’s feeling attachments like this is his new family. He shouldn’t be thinking
like that. It wasn’t ever supposed to get this far.
He’s counting the boxes Simon’s group had brought in when he hears footsteps
behind him and then:
“Christ,” in a rough shot-through voice, and then Negan’s hand is on his arm
and he’s being dragged into the nearest room. Door shut and locked and the
light switched on and it’s a storage closet and there’s barely room for both of
them and Carl can hardly think with the way Negan’s staring at him like he’s
something to be devoured.
“Wh-what,” Carl says. Though he knows what, can already feel the heat of it
spreading through his thighs. Negan takes a step forward and Carl is right back
as hard as he was this morning. Fuck.
Negan’s hand comes up to rest on the door such that his arm is a barrier
against Carl’s head. “Drivin’ me crazy,” Negan says, very quiet. “Watchin’ you
all day, walking around like that. Wearing that. Fuckin’ distracting, kid. You
hear me?” His fingers slip under the bra straps and Carl’s hips jerk
involuntarily.
“Maybe if you—fuck, maybe if you hadn’t put me in this you wouldn’t have been
so—oh, fuck,” because suddenly he’s being turned around and there’s Negan’s
hand at the clasp of his jeans, working them down off his hips. Slipping under
the waistband of the lingerie and wrapping around him, thumb skating across the
head of his dick, Christ, Christ—
“Can’t fucking focus with you looking like this,” Negan says. His voice is like
black poison dripping into Carl’s veins, everything floating and rough and hot
and slick. His mouth on the side of Carl’s neck leaving stubble burn on the
sensitive skin. Hand working like a piston on his dick. It’s only the second
handjob Carl’s ever had from Negan but the way he works his wrist makes it feel
like they’ve been at it for years. His other arm coming up to support Carl
around the waist, so that Carl can feel the line of his own dick in his jeans,
straining, pressed against Carl’s ass.
Carl’s close fast, part of the perks—or perhaps the perils—of being seventeen
and near-constantly turned on. He grabs back at the broad solid stretch of
Negan’s thigh to steady himself, rocking up into his hand and grinding back on
both his leg and his dick, and Negan’s fingers curl into his hair, inhaling a
sharp tight sound.
“We sure are horny today, aren’t we,” he whispers, and Carl closes his eyes.
“Shut… fuck, shut up,” he says, and then whimpers and comes all over Negan’s
hand, his hips juddering, all the heat and power of his orgasm coiling out of
him such that if Negan’s arm wasn’t there he’s not sure he’d still be standing
straight. Negan works him through it until it’s too much and he loosens his
death grip on his thigh—little lines on his fingertips where the denim dug too
hard into his skin—and feels Negan’s arm leave his waist so he can slide it
into his own pants.
Carl turns around. Still shaking, still wrung out, but he knocks Negan’s hand
out of the way all the same. Undoes the zipper and the snaps on his jeans,
jerks them down to just past his hips. His dick is thick and swollen and the
size surprises Carl maybe more than it should have, considering he’s felt the
outline of it before three times now, but he doesn’t let himself think before
he’s reaching out, wrapping his hands around it.
“Fuck,” Negan hisses, staring. Carl’s fingers are skinny, his wrists bird-thin
next to the lithe and agile power of Negan’s body. But Negan doesn’t complain
and he doesn’t pull away. Carl works him the way he’s jerked himself before,
the way he watched Negan jerk him last week, and when Negan’s close to coming
Carl spits on his palm and fucks the slit and Negan says, strained, “So you
were paying attention,” and then comes, spattering Carl’s hand and his wrist
and a bit onto his own t-shirt. The sight makes Carl’s dick twitch again
despite its oversensitivity and he has to cup himself to keep from doing
anything stupid like begging.
It’s quiet for a few seconds after. The heat in Negan’s eyes seems to have
taken on a different tone. The closet is small enough that it’s sweaty now,
smelling of sex. Carl watches Negan tuck himself back in, watches him lean down
a little to pull Carl’s own pants back up over his hips. Leaving them undone so
that the lace shows through, and Carl opens his mouth with no idea of what he
wants to say and finds himself being pulled forward. A second later Negan’s
mouth is on his, the stubble scraping at his jaw and chin and lips and it
should be uncomfortable but Carl arches into it, finds himself aching and
desperate for it in a way he wouldn’t have expected to be. Negan tucks his hand
under Carl’s jaw, lifting his head, tongue in his mouth. His lips are hot and a
little chapped and wet and he kisses as he does everything else with his whole
body, rocking his hips a little, moving their mouths together in a way that
makes Carl wonder if he could devour him whole.
“Can I,” Carl mumbles, when Negan pauses between kisses that alternate between
soft and small and then deep and rough and sinful. “Can I go—”
“Just a second,” Negan says. Working them together like this was all he wanted
in the first place. It should be weird. Why isn’t it weird? It’s just
fucking—really fucking good. Better than it was with Enid. Negan’s hand is on
his chest and his other hand is supporting him at the waist again and Carl
tilts his head back and lets himself be swallowed whole. Moans a little into
the kiss, hurt trembly noise, and Negan sighs, strokes his hair, pulls away
enough to whisper:
“That’s my boy,” against his mouth, and then moves in again.
They don’t leave for a long time. It feels like hours, Carl knows that can’t be
right but he stopped trying to keep track around the time that Negan discovered
he really likes when his neck gets kissed too. Carl’s pressed against the door
and his hands are on Negan’s hips and he’s slumped in his arms and it’s warm,
it’s so warm, and dark—Negan must have turned the light back off at some
point—and quiet, and Carl can’t think, doesn’t want to think. His whole mouth
tastes like Negan. His lips are sore and chapped themselves, his skin feels
burnt from the stubble. Negan’s kissing him into fucking oblivion and he
doesn’t care. He’s achy from the orgasm and feels raw and split open and tired
and like he never wants to move again.
He must fall asleep at some point because one second his mouth is working at
Negan’s and then suddenly he’s aware of Negan hoisting him up.
“Okay, kid, let’s go,” he’s saying, and Carl wraps his arms around Negan’s
neck, his legs around his waist. Hooks his ankles at the base of his spine.
Tucks his head against the warm sweat-slick neck. Negan opens the door and
steps out and Carl lets himself be held and carried, drifting in and out of
awareness like he used to in barely-there memories in the backseat of his dad’s
car on the way to visit his grandmother in Florida. He hears the slow murmur of
voices—occasionally Negan’s, rumbling against his nose—feels Negan’s hand under
his thigh, supporting him; the other, at the nape of his neck, keeps scratching
gently up into his hair. Loosening the ponytail in increments as it rubs at the
base of the scalp.
When next he’s fully conscious he’s being deposited onto Negan’s bed, onto the
soft sheets Carl assumes were once part of another colony, months or perhaps
years ago. Negan’s tugging his jeans off, pulling the blanket over his
shoulders. Carl’s throat aches, his eyes prick like he’s going to cry; he
doesn’t know why. He doesn’t.
“I’ll be back soon,” Negan tells him, his voice coming like a slow wash through
Carl’s muddied brain. “Did good for me today,” hand curling through his hair.
Carl exhales. Curls tighter against the pillow under his head. It smells like
Negan, leather and aftershave and cigarettes.
Maybe he does know why he didn’t kill him, he thinks, drifting, throat still
tight, Negan’s hand so careful on his head, his cheek. Maybe he does.
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